نسخة مذيلة من "بلاد فارس والشأن الفارسي" بقلم جورج كرزون، مع أوراق مدرجة [و‎‎٦‎٣‎٠] (١٨١٤/١٢٧٦)

THE EASTERN AND SOUTH-EASTERN PROVINCES 249
Kavir. The experiences of each were somewhat different. Lieu
tenant Galindo speaks of
Perfectly level ground, at first principally black mud, with isolated
patches of white salt, and slimy pools of green water. Gradually the salt
increases till it becomes a hard, almost unbroken, white crust, still with
the green pools standing on it, and looking something like the little
pools left by the sea in the hollows of a rocky coast at low water. It is
no exaggeration to say that the whole of this track (about twenty-six
miles) is marked out by carcasses of camels, averaging one for every 200
yards, in various stages of pickle.
Elsewhere there was little or no saline efflorescence, but
It appeared as if very liquid black mud had been suddenly arrested
and hardened, while in a state of violent ebullition or effervescence. The
ground is thickly pitted and honeycombed with round holes, from eight
to twelve inches in diameter, and generally about the same depth,
though some go down two or three feet. Between these are rounded
nodules or ridges of mud, some of which are solid, but some are merely
bubbles or blisters of earth, with a thin crust covering a treacherous
hole. On the path a horse has to move with slow circumspection,
stepping from knob to knob, or he would soon be lamed. Off the beaten
track, of course, it is simply impassable.
Lieutenant Vaughan, more to the west, wrote as follows :—
As we quitted the defile, a sudden turn in the road presented to
•our astonished gaze what at first sight looked like a vast frozen sea,
stretching away to the right as far as the eye could reach in one vast
glistening expanse. A more careful examination proved it to be nothing
more than salt formed into one immense sheet of dazzling brilliancy,
while here and there upon its surface, pools of water, showing up in the
most intense blue, were visible. Away to the north of it stood a distant
range of low red hills. A peculiar haze, perhaps caused by evaporation,
hangs over the whole scene, which, though softening the features of
the distant hills, does not obliterate their details. This is the Great
Salt Swamp, which, lying at a low level in the centre of the great
desert, receives into its bed the drainage from an immense tract of
territory. All the rivers flowing into it are more or less salt, and carry
down to it annually a great volume of water. The fierce heat of the
desert during the summer months causes a rapid evaporation, the result
being that the salt constantly increases in proportion to the water, until
at last the ground becomes caked with it. 1
1 Proceedings of the R.G.S. (new series), 1886, vol. viii. pp. 111-3. Lieutenant
Vaughan thinks that the Dasht-i-Kavir contains two great depressions, one at the
south base of the Kuh-i-Gugird, the other at the point formed by the junction of